This is an edited edition of Gramsci's notebooks and appears to be complete, finished, and organized. In fact, however, Gramsci did not organize his notebooks as they appear here. Hoare and Smith organized these notes around particular topics, whereas Gramsci originally wrote his notes in 29 separate notebooks, which he wrote at different times and never had the chance to systematically organize.

Antonio Gramsci (Italian: [anˈtɔːnjo ˈɡramʃi]; 22 January 1891 – 27 April 1937) was an Italian Marxist theoretician and politician. He wrote on political theory, sociology and linguistics. He was a founding member and one-time leader of the Communist Party of Italy and was imprisoned by Benito Mussolini's Fascist regime. Gramsci is best known for his theory of cultural hegemony, which describes how states use cultural institutions to maintain power in capitalist societies.